The police are charged with maintaining order, enforcing the laws, protecting personal and public property, and regulating traffic. They assist governmental and party agencies in the execution of their various resolutions, orders, and instructions. They monitor the rules of residence and the collection of taxes. In the event of natural disasters or major accidents they are equipped to rescue, to give first aid, and to transport victims to medical facilities. They supervise observance of quarantine measures imposed by health authorities. They monitor drinking establishments to ascertain that alcoholic beverages are not served to alcoholics, obviously drunken persons, juveniles, and drivers of motor vehicles. They are instructed to combat rowdy and irresponsible behavior—hooliganism, begging, and vagrancy—and other antisocial manifestations. They see that unsupervised and stray children are provided for.
Many militia functions are peripheral to the primary police duties of law enforcement and criminal investigation. Such functions include social controls having diverse objectives ranging from gun control to keeping undesirables off Sofia streets during visits of foreign dignitaries. The police have unusual powers in dealing with beggars, vagabonds, and others in the category that they classify as socially dangerous. Some of the controls are directed at preventing crime; others appear intended to reduce the possibility of incidents on occasions when the presence of such persons could be embarrassing. The regulation allows the police to prohibit individuals from visiting specified towns or areas or even from leaving their residences for a twenty-four-hour period. Some may be prohibited from meeting certain other specified persons or from frequenting certain parts of towns. Such restrictions can be for definite or for indefinite periods of time. Persons may be denied the use of common carriers or the privilege of attending sports events or of visiting certain public institutions. Some, prostitutes for example, may be denied the right to become telephone subscribers. If they think it advisable, the police may require some persons whom they are monitoring to report to them on a daily or other regular basis.
Individually held weapons, ammunition, and explosives are accounted for and are registered with the militia. Certain forestry and farm personnel, hunters, sportsmen, and youth organizations are authorized to retain controlled weapons. Explosives are permitted when they are required in, for example, construction projects. By law there is no production of cold weapons—brass knuckles, daggers, scimitars, and the like—in the country.
The police collect or maintain a major share of local records for the obshtina people's councils. These records deal with vital statistics, citizenship, identification, travel visas, registration of residences, licenses and permits, and employment data. A person acquires Bulgarian citizenship in the circumstances that are accepted in most other countries—by ancestry, place of birth, or naturalization—but there may be somewhat more than the usual number of situations in which he may lose it. Persons are deprived of citizenship if they leave the country unlawfully, leave lawfully but fail to return within a reasonable time after their visas expire, go abroad to avoid military service, acquire foreign citizenship in a manner not specified in Bulgarian law, or if they conduct themselves abroad in ways that are contrary to Bulgaria's interests or that are unworthy of a Bulgarian citizen. Persons not ethnically Bulgarian are released from their citizenship upon emigration, although they are not released unless all of their obligations in the country are settled.
Laws governing the stay of foreigners in the country also are administered and enforced by the militia. According to the revised law that took effect in 1972, the whereabouts of a foreigner is subject to the same rules that apply to Bulgarian citizens. His hotel or other local address, therefore, must be reported to the militia within twenty-four hours of his arrival at each stop. Tourists are usually unaware that such detailed records of their stays are being maintained, because hotel personnel ordinarily take care of the reporting. If the visitor stays at the home of a Bulgarian, that citizen must report his presence on the same twenty-four-hour basis.
A foreign visitor may travel freely otherwise, except that he may not go to certain restricted areas or to the border zone at any place other than at one of the designated crossing points. He must leave the country when the time specified in his visa has expired unless he has a criminal charge against him and is awaiting trial, has been sentenced and is serving a term in prison or at a correctional labor camp, or has the obligation to provide support for a person in the country.
Border Troops
The Border Troops are part of the Bulgarian People's Army and are organized within the Ministry of National Defense. Border units resemble regular military forces more than they do the police. They are considered militarized security units, and some 15,000 men serve in them.
Their mission is described as safeguarding the country's frontiers against penetration or illegal crossing. Because they are a part of the regular armed forces, it is presumed that in time of war they would work in coordination with those forces. If the enemy were to penetrate into Bulgaria, the Border Troops would be expected to control the area immediately behind the ground forces. If Bulgarian armies were driving the enemy beyond the borders, they would probably remain at the old border or establish a new one if the leadership expected to retain any newly occupied territory.
The most strictly defended borders are those shared with Greece, Turkey, and Yugoslavia, but the border with Romania is also defended. The Border Troops operate a number of patrol boats, both on the Danube River, where it forms the border with Romania, and along the Black Sea coast. The troops also control the movement of people into and within a border zone, which is a strip approximately eight miles wide in from the border. Smuggling, however, even large-scale smuggling, is the concern of the Ministry of Internal Affairs customs police and not of the Border Troops.